Testers Needed!!!

D

dakota97

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 14, 2003
Messages
113
Location
Pennsylvania
Hi all,

First off, I would like to thank all of you who helped me throughout this entire project. A lot of you dont know that you helped me, but for those of you who do, I sincerely thank you for your time and efforts.

Ok, on to the good stuff.

I have finally finished my first working VB.Net application, and I need some feedback (good or bad). I have created a Point-of-Sale program from scratch over the last 8 or 9 months. Now, obviously Im not completely finished with it yet, as there are a lot more features that I would like to add, but just havent had the time to implement. That main thing I wanted was to put together a complete, working program, and get it on the market. However, before I do that, I would like to have some people test it and let me know what they think, and if there are any errors that Ive overlooked.

As I said, Ive been working on this project for quite some time now, and my programming knowledge and skills have definitely grown (if you saw the original code you would see what I mean). Most of the knowledge that Ive obtained has been from this very forum, and all of the people that Ive come to respect for their programming knowledge. I couldnt have done it without your help.

Thats about all I have to say right now (since it is 6:00am and Ive been finishing things up all night). Please take time to download and check out my program, and PLEASE send me your feedback, as I really need to know the pros and cons about my work. Go to my download page at http://www.cgdesign.net/download.asp and download the appropriate version.

Again, thanks to everyone who helped me in gaining the knowledge and experience to become a .Net programmer.

Sincerely,

Chris
 
There we go:

On the setup:

- In the standard version of the setup it still demands the .Net setup, due to a wrong value in the ini file(BootStrapFx=true)
- In the end you get a textbox with "Setup completed succesfully". Isnt that a bit double on? I mean, the setup says that it is completed by itself in the end. If this is standard, dont mind it then, but I think not.

On the program:

- I think the yellow buttons are annoying
- You shouldnt be obliged to read the manual to know you must type in Admin/Admin the first time.
- The "log out" button doesnt do anything :?
- In the search for products, you should clearly state that you are expecting product ids.
- The checkout is a little bit confusing to me. As a dutchman, "amount tendered" doesnt say anything to me, so I typed in 2, 1 and 3%, but they all gave errors(non-fatal that is, but with a ugly .net-error box).
- When add catergories and departments you can only close the form by clicking "Cancel". I would rename it to "Close", thats more comforting ;)

On the manual:
- The quality of the screenshots is a bit too blurry. Maybe you could use TIFF? (or BMP for that matter)
- The font size could be a little bit smaller. Good manual though. Very clear.

Misc.:

- The access database youre using isnt secured. This means I can open it with access and scramble it, rendering your program useless. I think you might wanna put a password on it.

Thatll be it for now. :D
 
Himo,

Thank you for the feedback.

This is the first program that Ive written, so I knew that there were going to be things that could be done differently. But, that is why I posted it here so that I could get some feedback.

On the setup:

I realize that I didnt make the change in the bootstrap, so Ill take care of that. As far as the "Setup completed succesfully", I believe that is indeed standard, but only if you use the setup.exe to install the program. If you use the .msi file to run the installation, then you dont get that message. However, the reason that I included the setup.exe is that the average person isnt going to know what the .msi file is when installing. I dont know if theres a way to suppress the confirmation message in the .exe or not, but Ill check. But, I agree, it is a little annoying.

On the program:

- Ok, the yellow button ARE annoying. I wanted to make the buttons stand out so that people didnt just see the plain, ordinary control-colored buttons. Ill see if I can come up with another, more appealing color
- Ill put the initial login information into a messagebox that is only shown the first time the rogram is run. Youre right about having to read the manual.
- I can change the "Item #" label to "Prod ID" instead
- What suggestions could you give me instead of "Amount tendered" to make it more clear?
- I was going to change the "Cancel" button to "Close", but I guess I forgot. No problem.

On the Manual:

- Ill see what I can do about the image quality. What I wanted to do was at least give the user an idea of the screen that they should be seeing when performing the different functions. I see your point though.
- Im glad that you fel tha tthe manual is clear. Its the first time Ive written something like that, and I wanted to make sure that the user could understand how to use the program, without writing a a huge book for the manual. I hate buying software where the manual takes 3 weeks to reae from front to back.

Misc:

- I agree that the database does need to be secure. The only reason I didnt secure it was because I ran into some problems when I created the receipt and reports. Both items are made using Crystal Reports, and I had issues with the "Login Failed" error when loading the report. Im working on the code right now that will hopefully eliminate those errors, and will secure the database in the next release here shortly.

Again, thank you very much for the critique. If anyone else has any feedback, please do not hesitate to let me know.

Thanks,

Chris
 
About the amount tendered:
Im not really into the American Tax system(Im still in college, so I even dont have to pay Dutch taxes :D ), so I wouldnt know what it means, if you could explain that somewhere, it would be allright, because my vocabulary doesnt give anything useful except for the translation of tender, which you dont mean.
 
Himo,

The program is asking for the amount of money that the customer gave the user to pay for their order. If the total of the order is $90.00 and the customer gave them $100, then the $100 is the "Amount tendered". When the user types in amount tendered and clicks on the type of payment given (e.g. Cash, Check, etc.) then the program displays the change due back to the customer.
 
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